As the chairman of Artemis Records, the company that released Cornel West’s CD, Sketches of My Culture, I considered criticizing Cornel for his association with Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard. Without ever listening to it, Summers attacked West merely for having released a CD, dismissing the entire universe of recorded music as being “unworthy of a Harvard professor.” But like most record executives, I’m more tolerant of unorthodox associations than Summers, so I’ll continue to judge West by his work and the inspiration it provides.
Among the flurry of press reports sparked by the controversy–most of which alluded to the alleged “rap CD”–quite a few couldn’t get the facts straight. The New Republic claimed that West “has spent more time recording a rap CD and stumping for Al Sharpton than doing academic work.” In fact, West has canceled only one class in twenty-six years of teaching, and that was several years ago, to deliver a lecture in Ethiopia. West recorded the CD during a leave–a long-established privilege in academia. (Summers himself took a leave from a professorship at Harvard to work for the World Bank.)
A Summers aide has said that the confrontation with West was a “terrible misunderstanding,” but it’s possible that Summers knew exactly what he was doing, using West the way Bill Clinton used Sister Souljah: to placate conservative elements of his constituency. Not only did Summers harshly criticize West’s published work, he acknowledged that he had not read any of it or listened to the CD. Moreover, it’s obvious that what disturbs Summers is not the notion of a Harvard professor engaging in political activity but West’s particular beliefs: He criticized West’s involvement with Bill Bradley, Ralph Nader and Al Sharpton, but Summers himself supported Al Gore (as did West’s friend and supporter Henry Louis Gates Jr., head of the Afro-American studies department). Summers has been silent as his supporters have misrepresented West’s record and called him names. Two examples: The National Review‘s Rod Dreher referred to West as a “clownish minstrel” and the New York Daily News‘s Zev Chafetz called him “a self-promoting lightweight with a militant head of hair.”
West’s decision to record a CD is in keeping with a commitment to spread his ideals and ideas as far and wide as possible. His book Race Matters has sold more than 350,000 copies and is one of the most influential books on race of the past couple of decades. His other works are used as texts in college classes around the world. There is no other public figure who is welcome in academia, in the media, in both conventional and activist politics and in the religious world.
By the way, Sketches of My Culture is not a “rap” CD. West, like most contemporary music critics, acknowledges that hip-hop is a vital cultural language. But Sketches itself is a concept album that is predominantly spoken word surrounded by r&b music, a montage that includes limited and focused uses of hip-hop language. Like any work of art, it’s open to legitimate criticism, but it is clearly a serious attempt to use a modern art form to grapple with the themes that have animated West’s career: black history, spirituality and political morality. There is not a word of profanity on it.
The indefatigable West has reached out to poor communities, moderating the crucial final panel at a recent “Rap Summit” and appearing on urban radio shows that had never been graced by the presence of an academic. I have seen the faces of young people inspired by West’s linking of their own aspirations to the civil rights struggle and to the great philosophical and religious traditions. He urges them to live up to those examples. It has said something to the broader American community about Harvard that Cornel West is a professor there, and it will say something about Harvard if he is not.
